Brendan O’Keefe, Epic CIC – Advice for re-motivating staff

Brendan was the last speaker of the day, and is Managing Director of Epic CIC. On 1st January 2014, Epic moved away from Royal Borough of Kensington’s Youth Support and Development Service, becoming the UK’s first youth service employee-led mutual. Brendan and his team worked with Happy to create an exciting and happy workplace.

Brendan discussed the challenges involved in this new way of working – including giving staff pre-approval to make decisions, removing triangulation from the workplace, and recruiting for attitude.

Pre-approval was an idea Brendan took from Henry’s Happy Manifesto, and he admits that it was difficult – particularly when the first decision made through the pre-approval system, was coming up with the new name! However, he says “when you give a team a task and the responsibility, they do it really well.”

You can read more about how Happy worked with Epic CIC in Henry’s Blog.